My brother, the least computer savvy person, got fed up with windows breaking his drivers once a month and having to reinstall them. He ended up with a Dell desktop, Ubuntu installed and supported.
After a few questions about substitute programs, he hasn’t asked any more help.
He is literally Joe average user.
As Apple and Microsoft hand control of your computer to Big Brother, (May I demand your age?) Linux, variants thereof, will be the only OS without Big Brother inside, even if we have to create a black market in distros.
And the BSD family I hope. Kids should not be excluded from developer and educational opportunities because GitHub or other has “filthy dirty language” and who decides what is acceptable? THE GOVERNMENT!
Don’t forget that some state governments already forbid LGBTQIA+/LGBTQ+ and “unacceptable religious” material. OS vendors have gleefully taken orders from the now discarded Pam Bondi.
I check regularly to see if ICEBlock has been restored to the Apple AppStore, after a court ruled that its removal was a travesty.
Why choose one if you can use all of them?
Windows: gaming, running proprietary Windows-only apps (like engineering stuffs)
Linux: back end development, kernel hacking
macOS: mobile app development
Well nowadays I'm stick with macOS not because it's pretty, but because a necessary to do my work as a mobile app dev.
But 50% of the time you are going to have to apply some hack or workaround.
Gaming on linux is feasible, but it’s not hassle-free and we shouldn’t skip the fact that it still requires some effort. A cheap cost to free oneself from Microslop, but a cost nonetheless.
I remember having to spend 3 days to get games to work on Linux and then something like sound or a texture would be completely broken still. In many cases performance would be worse. But these days?
For me at least, Elden Ring on launch day worked flawlessly, anti-cheat and all, on Linux without having to do anything other than adjust settings in the game (which I needed to do on Windows too) and it ran better to boot!
Things are definitely miles better! I myself have switched fully to Linux as far as games go. But it’s still not the “Install and Play” experience one would expect on Windows.
Just check ProtonDB’s aggregates. Of all the Steam games with reports in the DB (~10% of the entire Steam catalogue), 30~60% (tier 1/platinum) are likely zero effort setups, 30~40% likely require some work (tier 2/gold), and the remainder will most probably do or not run at all.
Things have improved, are improving, and hopefully they’ll keep doing so. But we need to practice some degree of expectation management, especially given influx of new converts these days…
At this point I just point people to Silverblue or a variant. It's got SELinux, flatpaks, atomic updates and corporate sponsorship. I'm not so wild about Redhat these days, but Silverblue is honestly probably the best from the standpoint of being secure, stable, robust, generally well put-together out of the box, and very difficult for a noob to screw up. I don't love saying this, but it's true.
Pressing super/Windows button then typing the name what you want to run is a pretty much universal way to access applications, and settings are generally centralised and they aren’t changed that frequently. Keyboard shortcuts are also similar, and those that aren’t can be made the same (God! I hated Mint’s handling of Super+L).
I can understand if we were talking about helpdesk or something of the sort, but most computer use is via applications. It’s a deal breaker if one is exclusive to some OS, but if they aren’t, experience should be largely the same, no?
If you are "choosing" between operating systems, son get some rest it's past your bedtime.
If on the other hand there are 3 or more different operating systems running on your current desk, with multiple VMs, well ok lets talk.
Linux fan, great? Have you ever patched the kernel, that seems like the minimum before I can take you seriously as a voice of experience. Running other people distro scripts doesn't count but I'll accept applying a diff. Basic points if you have configured swap manually and know the lifetime of your /tmp
macOS user, awesome, do you know what a kext is. No? Oh. Never built a hackintosh? Uh, ok.
Windows, great, you know how to open a command prompt as system, right? Wait you've never heard of sysinternals huh, cool yeah.
If you're going to lecture others or roll your eyes at an OS, start from at least ankle deep levels of experience.
Did anyone read the article? Seems like someone who doesn't really understand how operating systems work wrote this. Literally talks about liking macOS because Apple makes good hardware? I thought they would actually talk about what makes these choices different rather than just giving subjective opinions without anything substantive backing it.
I also notice this with people who are getting into tech but don't want to code or actually interact with the system/know more about it. Every other week, they'll put on a new distro, brick their device, rebrick it and then consider it as a hobby/"doing tech stuff." One of my friends is like that and he's insufferable. He keeps asking me what I think of xyz distro and if he should use it just because he knows I code for a living (which means I must be constantly looking for the perfect linux distro obviously because I "do tech stuff").
I have never used any distro outside debian and ubuntu which according to him is for "noobs". smh
I got the idea for this text after learning from the Fireship channel about the latest Linux kernel exploit, which was related to a 2017 commit. And last week, I was discussing with friends who work with data science why I prefer to stay away from Linux today.
All right, but who am I to talk about this subject? I’ve been using macOS since mid-2007, without dual boot with Windows until mid-2010. After that time, I mainly used Windows to run Microsoft Flight Simulator X, until I eventually returned to using macOS exclusively until mid-2018.
From 2018 onwards, I became increasingly interested in computers and eventually started using Linux on an old MacBook that still powered on at the time. This MacBook was very limited and, even then, wasn’t capable of running a light distro like Linux Mint with XFCE well. Later, I realized it was becoming complicated to continue using my MacBook Pro with macOS, which would soon lose support, so I decided to start using Linux full-time. This phase lasted until mid-2022, when I bought my MacBook Air M2.
As is the case for many macOS or Linux users, during almost all this time I continued to have contact with Windows, especially at work. And currently, I use Windows 11 daily. That said, I believe I can offer my perspective as a user who genuinely uses these operating systems for daily tasks, who no longer plays online or offline games, and just wants a computer that is fully functional whenever turned on. I believe this covers a good portion of these systems’ uses.
My brother, the least computer savvy person, got fed up with windows breaking his drivers once a month and having to reinstall them. He ended up with a Dell desktop, Ubuntu installed and supported.
After a few questions about substitute programs, he hasn’t asked any more help.
He is literally Joe average user.
As Apple and Microsoft hand control of your computer to Big Brother, (May I demand your age?) Linux, variants thereof, will be the only OS without Big Brother inside, even if we have to create a black market in distros.
And the BSD family I hope. Kids should not be excluded from developer and educational opportunities because GitHub or other has “filthy dirty language” and who decides what is acceptable? THE GOVERNMENT!
Don’t forget that some state governments already forbid LGBTQIA+/LGBTQ+ and “unacceptable religious” material. OS vendors have gleefully taken orders from the now discarded Pam Bondi.
I check regularly to see if ICEBlock has been restored to the Apple AppStore, after a court ruled that its removal was a travesty.
Why choose? It's never been easier to run different OS for different tasks.
Why choose one if you can use all of them? Windows: gaming, running proprietary Windows-only apps (like engineering stuffs) Linux: back end development, kernel hacking macOS: mobile app development
Well nowadays I'm stick with macOS not because it's pretty, but because a necessary to do my work as a mobile app dev.
Unless your games require kernel anticheat, there's a decent chance they actually run better on Linux than Windows these days.
But 50% of the time you are going to have to apply some hack or workaround.
Gaming on linux is feasible, but it’s not hassle-free and we shouldn’t skip the fact that it still requires some effort. A cheap cost to free oneself from Microslop, but a cost nonetheless.
Definitely not 50%. Aside from the aforementioned anticheat titles, my entire Steam library works flawlessly and has for several years now.
I'm sure there's some long tail of titles with poor support, but how many people are actually playing those?
I remember having to spend 3 days to get games to work on Linux and then something like sound or a texture would be completely broken still. In many cases performance would be worse. But these days?
For me at least, Elden Ring on launch day worked flawlessly, anti-cheat and all, on Linux without having to do anything other than adjust settings in the game (which I needed to do on Windows too) and it ran better to boot!
Things are definitely miles better! I myself have switched fully to Linux as far as games go. But it’s still not the “Install and Play” experience one would expect on Windows.
Just check ProtonDB’s aggregates. Of all the Steam games with reports in the DB (~10% of the entire Steam catalogue), 30~60% (tier 1/platinum) are likely zero effort setups, 30~40% likely require some work (tier 2/gold), and the remainder will most probably do or not run at all.
Things have improved, are improving, and hopefully they’ll keep doing so. But we need to practice some degree of expectation management, especially given influx of new converts these days…
https://www.protondb.com/dashboard
I’ve never had a problem with running a Steam game on Linux.
Have you checked your calendar? It's 2026.
At this point I just point people to Silverblue or a variant. It's got SELinux, flatpaks, atomic updates and corporate sponsorship. I'm not so wild about Redhat these days, but Silverblue is honestly probably the best from the standpoint of being secure, stable, robust, generally well put-together out of the box, and very difficult for a noob to screw up. I don't love saying this, but it's true.
> and corporate sponsorship
That may be a good reason. Corporate oversight is one of the main reasons the other OSs are so terrible at prioritising the user.
To paraphrase the old taco ad, "¿Por qué no los tres?" I use all three daily and any of them are fine, provided you know what you're doing.
I have to use a windows computer at work, so I just use windows for everything to avoid fumbling shortcuts, finding settings, etc.
Pressing super/Windows button then typing the name what you want to run is a pretty much universal way to access applications, and settings are generally centralised and they aren’t changed that frequently. Keyboard shortcuts are also similar, and those that aren’t can be made the same (God! I hated Mint’s handling of Super+L).
I can understand if we were talking about helpdesk or something of the sort, but most computer use is via applications. It’s a deal breaker if one is exclusive to some OS, but if they aren’t, experience should be largely the same, no?
Years you say. Snark mode activated.
If you are "choosing" between operating systems, son get some rest it's past your bedtime.
If on the other hand there are 3 or more different operating systems running on your current desk, with multiple VMs, well ok lets talk.
Linux fan, great? Have you ever patched the kernel, that seems like the minimum before I can take you seriously as a voice of experience. Running other people distro scripts doesn't count but I'll accept applying a diff. Basic points if you have configured swap manually and know the lifetime of your /tmp
macOS user, awesome, do you know what a kext is. No? Oh. Never built a hackintosh? Uh, ok.
Windows, great, you know how to open a command prompt as system, right? Wait you've never heard of sysinternals huh, cool yeah.
If you're going to lecture others or roll your eyes at an OS, start from at least ankle deep levels of experience.
Did anyone read the article? Seems like someone who doesn't really understand how operating systems work wrote this. Literally talks about liking macOS because Apple makes good hardware? I thought they would actually talk about what makes these choices different rather than just giving subjective opinions without anything substantive backing it.
I also notice this with people who are getting into tech but don't want to code or actually interact with the system/know more about it. Every other week, they'll put on a new distro, brick their device, rebrick it and then consider it as a hobby/"doing tech stuff." One of my friends is like that and he's insufferable. He keeps asking me what I think of xyz distro and if he should use it just because he knows I code for a living (which means I must be constantly looking for the perfect linux distro obviously because I "do tech stuff").
I have never used any distro outside debian and ubuntu which according to him is for "noobs". smh
I got the idea for this text after learning from the Fireship channel about the latest Linux kernel exploit, which was related to a 2017 commit. And last week, I was discussing with friends who work with data science why I prefer to stay away from Linux today.
All right, but who am I to talk about this subject? I’ve been using macOS since mid-2007, without dual boot with Windows until mid-2010. After that time, I mainly used Windows to run Microsoft Flight Simulator X, until I eventually returned to using macOS exclusively until mid-2018.
From 2018 onwards, I became increasingly interested in computers and eventually started using Linux on an old MacBook that still powered on at the time. This MacBook was very limited and, even then, wasn’t capable of running a light distro like Linux Mint with XFCE well. Later, I realized it was becoming complicated to continue using my MacBook Pro with macOS, which would soon lose support, so I decided to start using Linux full-time. This phase lasted until mid-2022, when I bought my MacBook Air M2.
As is the case for many macOS or Linux users, during almost all this time I continued to have contact with Windows, especially at work. And currently, I use Windows 11 daily. That said, I believe I can offer my perspective as a user who genuinely uses these operating systems for daily tasks, who no longer plays online or offline games, and just wants a computer that is fully functional whenever turned on. I believe this covers a good portion of these systems’ uses.